Surviving The Storm
by Snafu1000
Summary: After their fight over the mirror, Merrill leaves Kirkwall with a blizzard on the way. Can Hawke find her in time?


_Author's Note: Just a little one-shot for the sake of finishing something. 'Beating The Heat' seems to have gotten lost in the ether, but Merrill definitely needs some love._

* * *

Hawke was gone. Of course she was. "I never want to see you again," was hardly the sort of statement that could be considered ambiguous, was it? Merrill had wanted to take the words back almost as soon as they had left her lips, but the hurt and anger hadn't let her, even as she saw the walls come down on Hawke's expression, leaving the hard-faced mercenary that was all that she would allow the rest of the world to see.

With her few friends, she was just Kayless Hawke: irreverent and profane, able to drink, gamble, wench, swear and fight with the best (and worst) that Lowtown had to offer, even after she had made her fortune in the Deep Roads and moved herself and her mother back into their ancestral mansion. Merrill had been one of those friends; Kayless had been kind to her, never laughing at her mistakes or silly questions, never seeming to care that she used blood magic. She brought food when the elf forgot to eat, patched the holes in her leaky roof, and when she smiled at Merrill, sometimes the elf would look into her blue eyes and forget to breathe.

But she was gone, and the Arulin'Holm with her, and Merrill couldn't tell which loss grieved her more. She'd just lost the best friend she'd ever had and her one chance to repair the Eluvian and restore some piece of the knowledge that had been lost to the elves over the centuries. She'd given up everything in that quest for knowledge, and now she had nothing to show for her years of effort. Not even the friend whose smile could make even her deepest frustrations more bearable.

She left her house, left the Eluvian with its mocking, broken face, letting her feet take her where they would, her mind tumbling over itself. Why hadn't Marethari trusted her with the Arulin'Holm after she had done what had been requested of her? What had the Keeper told the clan, that poor Pol would have run into the jaws of a vartarrel, rather than face Merrill? And why – _why_ – would Hawke have refused to give her the tool that would have let her complete the Eluvian, after she had said so many times that she believed in her?

Lies. They'd just been lies told to placate Merrill the fool, Merrill the dreamer, Merrill who couldn't even find her way around Kirkwall without a ball of twine, Merrill who couldn't remember to save enough coin for food. She'd wandered through the gates in her musings, vaguely realized that she was bound in the direction of the Sundermount, and that she'd forgotten shoes, staff, cloak, food. She didn't care. She just wanted to be away from this crowded, noisy, confusing city and beneath the familiar trees; away from the memory of blue eyes that made her forget to breathe and strong arms that had held her as she had cried for Pol. Away from failure and pain and loss, and to...what? She didn't know, didn't care. Just...away.

The late winter wind whipped around her, the cold biting deep, but she ignored it, kept walking until the trees surrounded her, towered over her. She felt the shivers that wracked her body with an odd sense of detachment. She remembered being told that freezing to death was a peaceful thing, that you felt warm in the end, and she wondered how long it would be before she felt that warmth. Did she want to die? Or did she simply not care? She had fought for so long, believed in herself and her task when it seemed that no one else did, and she was simply tired of fighting.

Snow was falling now: thick, heavy flakes swirling in the wind, and Merrill could smell the promise of more in the air: one final blizzard that would cover the ground with a heavy blanket of white, hiding what lay beneath it until the next warm snap melted it all.

She settled to the ground beneath a massive oak, leaning into the trunk, the shivers growing more violent. Her already inadequate clothes were now wet with melted snow, and beginning to freeze at the edges. Would they miss her in Kirkwall? Varric would, she was sure, and Isabela. Would Hawke destroy the Eluvian, or return it to the clan, and would Marethari accept it if she did? The thoughts had a distant, dreamlike quality, lacking any real urgency, and Merrill realized that the shivering was subsiding, and she actually was beginning to feel warm...and sleepy. She let her head rest against the oak, barely able to feel the bark pressing into her cheek as her eyes slipped closed. There was no pain, and the realization brought a smile to her lips. No pain, and she was warm...

* * *

She was warm.

Awareness returned slowly, and with it, the realization that her surroundings had changed. The oak tree was gone, and she was stretched out on a pile of spruce branches with a fire blazing in a pit in front of her and a very familiar wolfskin cloak bundled around her.

"Awake?" Kayless' voice was close to her ear, and Merrill suddenly realized that the warmth at her back was not entirely from the cloak. The full length of the warrior's muscled body was pressed to her, an arm about her waist holding them together, and from the feel of it, neither of them had a stitch of clothing on. The fire had nothing to do with the sudden heat that suffused her from head to toe.

"What are you doing here?" she demanded, trying to pull free of the embrace, but Hawke held her firmly, and she simply didn't have the will to struggle harder. "I told you -"

"That you never wanted to see me again," Kayless finished softly, with a pain in her voice that Merrill had not heard since Bethany had died in the Deep Roads. "I know. I came back to apologize, and to give you the Arulin'Holm, but you were gone, and when Varric said you'd been spotted leaving the city without even a cloak, and a blizzard on the way, I had to follow you." Lips pressed to her shoulder, sending a fresh twist of heat beneath her skin. "You were almost dead when I found you; the snow was covering you and your skin was like ice. A few more minutes, and I might not have seen you at all. What were you thinking? How could you go out with a storm like this coming in?"

The reproach in her voice doused the sudden leap of joy that Hawke's statement about giving her the Arulin'Holm had caused, and she pulled free of the warrior's arm, and squirmed from beneath the cloak. The cave they were in was small enough that the heat from the fire warmed it against the howling wind and driving snow that completely obscured the world beyond the mouth of the cave. "Because I'm a fool, Hawke; what else?" she replied bitterly. "Marethari thinks it, all of you believe it, so why be surprised when I do something foolish? Why even bother to save me at all?"

"Because I couldn't lose you." Hawke sat up, her blue eyes fixed on Merrill's face with an intensity that had the elf reminding herself to breathe. "You're no fool, Merrill. You're one of the bravest people that I know: you left everything you knew to do what you felt was right, but that mirror...it's dangerous, Merrill. I can feel it. That demon that you deal with is dangerous, and if anything happened -" She broke off, dropping her eyes. "Maybe I'm the fool for deciding to give you that damn tool," she muttered, shaking her head slowly, "but I couldn't live with you hating me."

Watching the dejected slump of her shoulders, Merrill felt the bitterness and anger fading. Kayless had lost so much: her brother in their flight from Ferelden, then her sister in the Deep Roads. Her mother still blamed her for both deaths; Kayless spent almost no time in the mansion she'd bought. Leandra Hawke was the fool, not seeing what a brave and kind daughter she had. "I don't hate you, Hawke," she whispered, sinking to her knees beside the crestfallen warrior. "I didn't mean those awful things I said; I was just hurt and angry. I – I don't think I could live if I hated you." She reached out a hesitant hand to brush dark hair away from a tanned cheek, traced the line of a scar with one finger: from the ear along the line of the warrior's jaw. Just one scar of so very many that crisscrossed the lanky body, and Merrill suddenly realized that she could see far more than she ever had before, and her finger slipped lower, finding a puckered line that followed the curve of her shoulder, then lower -

Hawke's hand caught hers. "What – what are you doing?" she asked in an unsteady voice. Her eyes were wide with surprise, but underneath was something else: something that warmed Merrill more than the fire ever could.

"Looking," she replied simply. "I've never seen this much of you before. You can look at me, too." Hawke's eyes had yet to stray below her neck.

The warrior swallowed hard. "I don't know if that would be a good idea," she said at last, looking away.

Merrill hesitated, drawing her hand back. "Why not?" she asked in a low voice, dropping her own eyes, cursing her clumsy attempt at seduction. "Is it because you and Isabela -?" She trailed off; she knew that Hawke kept company with the pirate, that they were best friends and that they had sex sometimes, because Isabela had told her about it.

"Isabela is...Isabela," Hawke replied with a shrug. "She's not looking for anything but a good time, and neither was I. With you..." Blue eyes met hers briefly, then slid away again. "I'm not sure I could stop with looking right now."

"Why stop?" she asked bluntly. Something about the storm outside, the sense of being cut off from the world, or perhaps just the knowledge of how close she had come to death was giving Merrill a boldness that she'd never had before. "I'm not a child, Hawke." She caught one of the warrior's hands and brought it up to her breast, shivering a bit at the feel of the callused fingertips against her skin.

Hawke gave a shaky laugh, her eyes fixed on her hand, letting the fingers drift slowly along the slope of the breast, and Merrill couldn't stop the whimper that escaped her as the careful touch circled her nipple. "No, you're no child," Kayless agreed in a husky voice, hunger and fear at war in her eyes now, "and I've wanted you for so long...dreamed about you."

Dimly, Merrill wondered if she was still beneath the oak tree, having a final dream of her own as she slid into death, but if that was so, she was going to be certain that it was a good dream. "Then take me," she whispered fiercely, leaning closer. "Make me yours. Now."

The blue eyes darkened with desire, the black of the pupils flaring wide as Hawke caught her shoulders, pulling her down and moving on top of her, the weight and warmth of her nothing short of glorious. Lips claimed hers, slow at first, and careful, but with only bare skin between them, careful was quickly overwhelmed by urgency, and Hawke's tongue swept into her mouth, stroking and thrusting, sucking on Merrill's tongue, and the elf moaned into her mouth, wrapping her legs around the warrior's hips and grinding against her in response to the pulse of need at her core.

Fingers tangling in her hair, tipping her head back to expose her neck to Hawke's assault: licking, sucking, kissing, biting. Not gentle, but so very, very wonderful, and Merrill dug her nails into Hawke's shoulders, urging her on, begging her with wordless cries and gasps, the rocking of her hips growing more desperate.

"Hawke, please...I need...I need!" Seconds later, fingers were pushing into her, a groan thrumming in Hawke's chest at the slickness she encountered, and then her lips closed over a breast, teeth and tongue working feverishly at the nipple while her fingers began to thrust, deep and hard, her hips driving the penetration, Merrill meeting every thrust with one of her own, feeling the delicious tension beginning to coil low in her body.

"Harder!" she demanded, and her lover obliged, sweat glistening on their bodies in the firelight as the cloak was thrown to the side. Fingers filled her again and again, and now a thumb pressed between her slick folds, finding the swollen nub at her center and stroking it in relentless circles, and she threw her head back, screaming as her release shattered her, her body arching, bucking, shuddering, her nails digging furrows into Hawke's back.

She sank back, her body trembling and nearly boneless as Hawke's head dropped to her breast. She let her fingers trail through the tangled locks as they lay entwined, the breakneck rhythm of heart and lung slowly returning to a more normal cadence. After a time, Kayless lifted her head, blue eyes watching her tenderly, reaching up to brush a thumb along the curve of her lower lip.

"I've wanted to do that for so long now," she murmured.

"I've wanted you to," Merrill agreed, then, shyly, "Does this...mean that I'm yours now?" Hawke had never been one for exclusivity, but Merrill wasn't sure that she could bear knowing that Kayless was doing such things with anyone else. Not now.

"No." Merrill's heart sank at the soft reply, but Hawke pushed herself up until she was looking down into the elf's eyes. "It means that I'm yours. Yours, and no one else's, for as long as you want me." Lips brushing over hers. "I love you," carried on a soft breath against her skin.

"And I love you, _ma vhenan_." The first time she had dared utter the endearment aloud. "What do we do now?" Kayless Hawke...hers? The notion had never been one that she had let herself even contemplate.

"Well, there's my mother to scandalize," Hawke smirked, though there was a shadow of bitterness in her eyes as she spoke the words. "I hope you don't mind me moving in with you; at least then, I'll be able to make sure you're well fed. We get to put up with 'Bela acting smug; she's been at me for weeks to do this, so she'll take full credit, I'm sure. There's a mirror to fix, and the demon to watch out for." She lowered her head, brushing soft kisses over Merrill's face. "But right now, I'm thinking that this storm will take a few days to blow itself out. Fortunately, I brought food," she added, nodding toward a pack that leaned against the cave wall, "and I gathered plenty of firewood, so we just have to come up with a way to pass the time." She drew the cloak back over them both, her lips nuzzling along Merrill's neck while her hands began moving over the elf's body, quickly reigniting the embers of desire. "Think we can manage?"

"Yes," Merrill breathed, letting her own hands begin to explore the planes and curves of her lover's body. "I think we'll manage quite nicely."


End file.
